Ageism or experience

Devoted and Disgruntled Archivist

Why this title:- Sessions where being posted for discussion with all the emphasis on youth. I wanted some balance.

What was said:- Tess started by saying that she experiences ageism from the opposite end to me i.e: as a person she is often perceived as being younger and therefore less ‘intelligent’ than her years.

Rich finds it difficult to find older performers and collaborators, and bemoans the fact that ( also apparent in this Open Space) the world he/we work in doesn't reflect the rich texture of the multi-cultural and aging world we live in. We also discussed the fact that a lot of discussion is had about attracting ‘young’ audiences but none about attracting ‘older’ people.

Rich also suggested that the Playhouse's Haydays should embrace information technologies.

My own concern is that I have issues with getting design work in theatre, and have often wondered if ageism is at work here. When I've seen the design of the productions I didn't get, they have been very similar to the kind of work I proposed at the interview but the designer is younger; so, does experience count for nothing and should I just give up and let the next generation take the jobs? Emma suggested that some of the experience I have had may be daunting to producers/directors and they question why I may be applying for the post in the first place.

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Latest

We live now in information - it is our environment. An aspect of what we can do in response to current events is the information we have about what's actually going on. Perhaps if we can clean up the information environment we will make better decisions about what to do next.

We combined two discussions, one about what it was to navigate the world of theatre with a female body and the other about what it was to navigate that world with a working class voice. There are many parallels.

To get more diversity in our arts scene we will need to deal with the emotional undercurrents that are fueling our behaviour and impeding progress. What solutions do we have for addressing this? We did focus on what it means to be a woman who is doing this. What is below is not a prescription, rather a record of our discussion.

"How do we improve female working class visiblility in the arts?" was the question posed at the start of day.
As a female arts sector leader (Festival Director - therefore a programmer, fundraiser, commissioner, debater, network lead/contributor, ambassador, etc), I felt it was important to ask what people wanted or needed from me, as someone who has a voice -in certain spaces- to offer. I was trying to buck the assumption that I would already know what women wanted from their peers and lead

The use of co-productions between opera houses across different parts of the world is claimed to be a way to pool companies’ resources and save money. However, is a consequence of this practice that such productions are likely to communicate less effectively with the audience of any single theatre because they are trying to reach too many different audiences at the same time and because taste varies so greatly across the world?

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